Valparaíso Natural History Museum

The Valparaíso Natural History Museum is Chile's second oldest museum, after the National Natural History Museum in Santiago. It began life in 1878 in the Valparaíso Boys Secondary School when teacher Eduardo de la Barra, together his pupils, started to build a library of scientific books and specimens of local flora and fauna.

Much of that was, however, lost in the devastating earthquake that hit Valparaíso in 1906 and the subsequent fire in the school.

In 1914, the Museum was re-founded with help from local citizens who donated important collections. However, it still lacked a permanent home and was shuttled around different places until, in 1988, it moved to its current premises, the so-called Palacio Lyon.

The building

Façade of Valparaíso Natural History Museum.

A National Monument since 1979, the Palacio Lyon was built in the 1880s for Santiago Lyon, one of the founders of an important local shipping company, and his wife, Gertrudis Pérez. Of Scottish descent, Santiago Lyon had been educated in England and the overall style of the Palacio is that of a Victorian house, although French neoclassical influence is also apparent in the interior decoration.

The house was one of the few in Valparaíso to survive the 1906 earthquake. Four years later, Santiago Lyon sold it to the Chilean state, which converted it into a technical college, a function it continued to serve until 1975.

Key features of the house, with 50 rooms on three floors, include the façade, with its columns and two bow windows.

Inside the Museum

The permanent exhibition, which occupies 14 rooms, consists in a journey through the Valparaíso Region's different ecosystems - the sea, the coast, oceanic islands, the Aconcagua River, the La Campana National Park and the valley - explaining the different components of each environment.

The Museum's natural science collection comprises around 60,000 specimens, including land and sea vertebrates, particularly birds. It also holds collections of mollusks and gastropods and geological samples and fossils from Chile and other countries as well as an important botanical collection.

In addition, it has an bioanthropological collection that includes four mummies from northern Chile's indigenous Chinchorro people, sixteen mummies of other cultures locals as well as pottery from the San Pedro de Atacama, Diaguita and Mapuche cultures.